regulaite-presentation

Between Market-making and Economic Statecraft: Geo-locating Europe in the Geopolitics of AI Regulation

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---
name: contents-slide

## Overview

[Background](#part1)

- The rise of (Open) Strategic Autonomy and Digital Sovereignty

[Argument](#part2)

- Global context, recasting the European bargain, ideas as coalition magnets

[Empirical Strategy & Data](#part3)

- Interviews and Discourse Network Analysis

[Case Study I: Trade Policy](#part4)

- Towards qualified openness

[Case Study II: Digital Policy](#part5)

- Shared concerns, different understandings

]

---
name: part1
class: inverse, center, middle

# How do narratives about the future shape the politics of today?

---

## Some title

> "European strategic autonomy is goal #1 for our generation. For Europe, this is the real start of the 21st century." &mdash; Charles Michel, President of the European Council

]

---

## Changing Views of the (Digital) Single Market

> Digital sovereignty as the "capability that Europe must have to make its own choices, based on its own values, respecting its own rules.” 	&mdash; Ursula von der Leyen

<br>

> To build the Europe of tomorrow, our standards cannot be under American control, our infrastructures, ports and airports under Chinese capital and our digital networks under Russian pressure [...]. European freedom of action depends on this economic and digital sovereignty."	&mdash; Emanuel Macron

<br>

> "To be digitally sovereign, the EU must build a truly digital single market, reinforce its ability to define its own rules, to make autonomous technological choices, and to develop and deploy strategic digital capacities and infrastructure. At the international level, the EU will leverage its tools and regulatory powers to help shape global rules and standards." &mdash; European Council

---

## Autonomy and Sovereignty on the Rise

<br>

]

]

---
name: part2
class: inverse, center, middle

# Argument

[Back to the contents slide](#contents-slide)

]

---

## A New Phase of European Integration?

<br>

> We understand the rise of (open) strategic autonomy to be part of a broader 'Recasting of the European Bargain' (Sandholtz & Zysman, 1989) in which Europe's 'Embedded Neoliberalism' (van Apeldoorn, 2002) is challenged.

<br>

We develop this argument in three steps:

- A changing world creates an opening
  - for neo-mercantilist and socially-oriented actors to challenge the hegemonic neoliberal compromise
  - against the background of which the 'promoters of Europe' (Jabko, 2006) use the idea of strategic autonomy to both reorient and advance the European project.

---

## The Argument I: A Changing World

> "We argue that in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis a new phase of global disorder has emerged, with far-reaching consequences for European integration. This phase of global disorder is underpinned by a number of reconfigurations, which we characterize as four emergent global shifts within this post-crash world: the decentring of globalization, geopolitical turbulence, monetary and financial instabilities and ideological fluidity."

]

]
---

## Argument II: Europe' Evolving Compromise

- The "translation of 'pressures' emanating from processes of global structural change does not take place in a predetermined fashion but is mediated by the strategic action of key political and societal actors" (van Apeldoorn, 2002)

- European Integration can be understood as an evolving 'hegemonic compromise' between three factions.

- Hegemonic compromises entrench certain ideas such that they seem natural or inevitable and everyone needs to couch their policy goals in the hegemonic language.

]

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---

## Argument III: Ideas as 'Coalition Magnets'

- Against the background of a challenge to an existing compromise, the promoters of Europe can strategically use vague ideas to forge a new compromise

- Such ideas function as 'coalition magnets' (Beland & Cox, 2016): their ambiguity is a feature, not a bug as it allows them to appeal to a variety of actors (Jabko, 2006)

- But while *under*-defined, they are not *un*-defined: they make certain policies possible while precluding others which is why they are contested and actors want to avoid 'rhetorical entrapment' (Schimmelfennig, 2001)
]

<br>

> "The key components of a coalition magnet are the ambiguous or polysemic character of the idea that makes it attractive to groups that might otherwise have different interests, and the power of policy entrepreneurs who employ the idea in their coalition-building efforts" (Beland & Cox, 2016).

]

---
name: part3
class: inverse, center, middle

# Empirical Strategy & Data

[Back to the contents slide](#contents-slide)

]

---

## Case Selection & Approach

- Trade policy is an interesting case because

- it is crucial for Europe's relation with the world
  - External challenge to market power Europe
  - it is often considered a bastion of neoliberalism

- Digital policy is interesting because
  
  - Historically tied to fears of technological dependence
  - Internal challenge for market power Europe
  - Similarly neoliberal through the 'Bangemann' consensus

- Two empirical approaches:

- Interviews and primary document analysis

- Discourse Network Analysis (of 319 responses to the EU’s 2020 trade policy review)

---

# Case Study: Trade Policy

[Back to the contents slide](#contents-slide)

]

---

# A Changing World

- The 'geopoliticization of trade' (Meunier & Nicolaidis, 2019) has be a ‘big wake up call for the EU’ (Interview 2)

- Many in the EU agree that we currently witness a ‘change from a rule-based trade environment [...] to a power-based one’ (Interview 5)

- The EU has now understood that the tools and mindset of the past are no longer enough

]

]

---

### Actor Congruence Network

---

## (Dis-)Agreement Patterns

<br>

---
## The Concept of Open Strategic Autonomy

<br>

- OSA as the banner under which the EU marshals its response to a changing world.

- OSA not an oxymoron, but based on the idea that autonomy and openness go together

- Therefore, as much openness as possible while being as resilient and assertive as necessary

]

<img src="data:image/png;base64,#osa.jpeg" style="display: block; margin: auto;" />
]

???

It is not a “contraction in terms”, as one of our interviewees noted, “to say that to be more autonomous one does not need to become more independent. (...) It is not independence that we are looking for, but deliberately chosen interdependence” (Interview 3). Strategic autonomy is therefore not about “self-suﬃciency” but about “strategic alternatives” (Interview 5).

“To be autonomous”, as an interviewee from the Commission put it, “you need to be strong because if you’re really weak it’s diﬃcult to be autonomous in a geopolitical sense. And if by closing you become weaker, then, of course, openness is a kind of precondition of autonomy. (...) But at the same time, we don’t want to be naive. In an ideal world, (...) everyone is playing by the rules. [But in the real world], you need to be equipped to react [if actors don’t play by the rules]” (Interview 6). In other words, the Commission wants to achieve autonomy through openness; and it wants to do this by pursuing as much openness as possible while being as resilient and assertive as necessary.

---

## OSA as a Coalition Magnet

- OSA has become the dominant concept in the Commission's internal as well as external communication and all new policy initiatives can and need to be justified against it.

- It encapsulates a powerful narrative that expresses shared concerns and speaks to both
  - those that the EU to more assertively defend the interests of European companies as well as European values;
  - and those that want to retain the EU's commitment to openness.

- It thus creates a broad agreement on **doctrine of qualified openness** that reﬂects both a changing world and changing coalitions within Europe and gives the Commission new ‘autonomous tools’ (Weyand, 2022) to protect and promote European interests and values.

- "Without such a strong narrative that “galvanizes” actors “you’re not going anywhere” in politics; but the idea that “you want to be cooperative whenever possible, and autonomous each time necessary. That’s a narrative. That’s a strong narrative” (Interview 3).

---

# Case Study II: Digital Policy

[Back to the contents slide](#contents-slide)

]

---

## A Geotech World

> "Technology has become geopolitics. [We] are on the threshold of a geotech world." &mdash; Julian King

]

]

---

## From Bangemann to Breton

- In the 1980s and 1990s, in response to the rise of the information society and fears of 'semiconductor vulnerability' (Huntington, 1991), the EU has developed a neoliberal, market-making 'telecommunications' policy (Heidebrecht 2022)

- Putting its full “faith in market mechanisms as the motive power to carry us into the information age” (Bangemann, 1994), digital policymaking followed the EU's broader 'embedded neoliberalism' (van Apeldoorn, 2002) well into the 2010s

- It was only recently, that this market-making agenda was - under the banner of digital sovereignty - complemented if not replaced by a much more ambitious agenda of regaining control of the digital

]

]

---

## The Variegated Appeal of Digital Sovereignty

- Ambiguity as a *feature*, not a bug (Lambach & Opperman 2022)

- Ambiguous ≠ amorphous 
  - DS at its core is about protecting or promoting EU single market and social market
  - European values or interests
  - Rules/standards versus home-grown capacity (regulatory vs tech superpower)

- In spite of broad appeal, the term remains contested
  - Fears of anti-American protectionism
  - Distracts from substance of debates due to political baggage of 'sovereignty'
  - Disagreement over precise direction of the changes to EU digital policy

---

## A New Digital Compromise

<br>

- Technological dependence of firms, citizens, and governments: intrusiveness of technologies & geopolitical battleground

- Neo-mercantilists: need for capacity-building and protection because "without an independent national [tech] industry there can be no national independence" (Ren Zhengfei)

- Socially oriented actors: extending the EU social & regulatory model into the digital space

- However, market-making continues to be a core aspect of the digital space

---

## Thank You!